


sun falls moon lights

by silentwalrus



Series: Bucky Barnes Gets His Groove Back & Other International Incidents [4]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Culinary adventures, HAP late HONKA, Holiday Shenanigans, Jew-ish Bucky Barnes, M/M, Russian Translation Available, too many animals living and dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-19 18:17:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17006721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silentwalrus/pseuds/silentwalrus
Summary: 'Tis the season.





	sun falls moon lights

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Sun falls moon lights](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17556311) by [Tressa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tressa/pseuds/Tressa), [WTF_Marvel_Trash_Party](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WTF_Marvel_Trash_Party/pseuds/WTF_Marvel_Trash_Party)



> this is post ithlyn 2, which YES I KNOW I HAVENT EVEN STARTED POSTING YET but this is the version of steve and bucky that wanted the holiday moment & tbh it all makes sense regardless imo. Can definitely stand alone entirely
> 
> \- thank you to jhsc for jewpicking! 
> 
> \- title from.... hell of a night by schoolboy q. i'm... sorry.

Steve’s not exactly sure what happens, but it’s like the first string of lights to go up on 5th Avenue sets off some kind of psychological bomb in Bucky. He spends a few days glaring at the slow creep of festivity - though slow is relative, since there were Christmas ads up even before Thanksgiving - and then just when Steve thinks he’s safe Buck goes fully and completely off the pier, into the deeps and all the way down to the ocean floor.

They are having a Christmas Dinner. Bucky is going all out for this Christmas dinner. So far out, in fact, that he starts planning it three weeks in advance.

“So we’re doing… Christmas?” Steve says feebly, thinking of the very small menorah and bag of chocolate gelt buried in his box of protein powder **.** It’s the one place Bucky is guaranteed not to stumble over or intentionally look, and the animals won’t get into it either.

Bucky frowns at him. “We’re doing a dinner. When we all have no other commitments. On the twenty-ninth,” he says. “Natasha’s not in the country until the twenty-seventh. Sam’s not back until the twenty-eighth.” His eyes unfocus slightly. “You did the twenty-sixth.”

“Yeah,” Steve confirms, unable to help the warm surprise that still crops up every time Bucky brings something up from their childhood. “Ma always worked Christmas, it was our own little tradition. Of poverty.”

“You can pretend you’re still full of poverty if you like,” Bucky says, returning to his notebook. “We are having a dinner.”

“Okay,” Steve says. “No problem there. Is this something we need to…” He hunts for a term that isn’t _colonize our precious living space with cheap useless gaudy plastic garbage and panic about the whole month of December. “..._ plan?”

“Yes,” Bucky says.

The reason Bucky has to plan so far in advance is that he’s “sourcing” a pig. A whole entire oink-oink little pig. And it has to he the _right_ kind of pig, because god forbid they just go to the butcher four blocks over. “I considered a goose,” Bucky says seriously, scanning his meticulously ordered lists. “But it’s not enough. And the marinade options for pork are better.”

“Can it not be alive?” Steve begs. “When it comes through the door, can it please be dead?”

“Don’t be a baby,” Bucky says, which isn’t an answer. “Here. Build this. There’s space in the backyard by the tubers.”

Steve gets handed an entire diagram and list of acceptable materials, along with a map of the backyard where Bucky has helpfully labeled the suggested location with an X. What Steve’s building - he turns the diagram around - is a fire pit. A fire… box. Pit.

“Now?” Steve asks glumly. He’s gonna have to go to the hardware store.

“Yes,” Bucky says, now frowning at his spice rack. “We’ll need to test it.”

Steve builds the pit. Box. Box pit. It’s mostly digging and adding bricks, though Bucky has demanded a rack and a metal lid thing that Steve is probably going to just shape out of sheet metal with his hands. It works; he only slices his palm open once and manages to conceal it completely from Bucky, which is the only thing that saves him having to scrub the brick and metal down with bleach when a quick spot wipedown will do.

The pit, after deep inspection, is approved. Bucky tests it with two massive pork shoulders, marinated in a bourbon mixture that makes Steve’s mouth water despite the fact that he witnesses Bucky injecting some of it deep into the meat via an honest to god syringe. The meat cooks all day, with Bucky occasionally prodding it with a metal finger; towards the evening he stokes the coals into a fire and roasts a crispy skin onto it, standing over it like some kind of ancient meat guardian, the light of the flames making his face sharpen and glow.

Steve keeps glancing at the sun setting, probably too often to look anywhere near normal, but Bucky is fully occupied by communing with the meat and preventing the dog from doing anything similar. As the light starts to fade Steve’s antsiness gets the better of him, so as soon as Bucky nods gravely at the pork and proclaims it just about done Steve says, “Can you come inside a minute?”

Bucky’s eyebrows immediately snap down, his whole body bracing. “Is this a surprise.”

“A very small one,” Steve says quickly. “Very small. And if you don’t like it we don’t have to do anything. But - okay, look, I know you just cooked twenty pounds of pork and we are definitely going to eat it, but -”

Steve set the tiny menorah on the kitchen table, with the candles and matches next to it, on a cloth that’s just his nicest looking handkerchief unfolded last minute which he is definitely kicking himself over. Bucky stops dead in the doorway.

“We don’t have to,” Steve says, trying to sound comfortable and relaxing and not at all like he’s sweating. He shouldn’t have poked his nose into this. “I just thought. The first night is today, so. We could try it if you want.”

Bucky stands there, then slowly pulls a chair and sits down. Steve sits down next to him. He’s about to try and say something about how they _really don’t have to_ and this is something personal, obviously, but then Bucky opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again, closes it, then fumbles for Steve’s hand and grips it very tightly. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” Steve said, ribcage opening with relief. “No problem.”

They sit and look at it. Steve’s not moving until Bucky does. “I don’t remember the words,” Bucky says eventually. “We didn’t. It was never… the prayers, we - she was the one who said them. My ma.” His hand tightens and then loosens slowly on Steve’s. “I don’t know the words.”

“We can look them up,” Steve suggests.

“Yeah. Yeah.”

They look them up. Then they look up the pronunciation. They read about the light that should have gone out but didn’t, hunched shoulder to shoulder over a tiny phone screen. They play the pronunciation video on Youtube twice to make sure they’ve got it, near perfect recall or no. Bucky lights the shamash, and they say the blessings, and he lights the candle. They watch it burn for a little while.

“Hey,” Steve says, nudging Bucky. “I got you chocolate.”

Bucky, his metal hand back on Steve’s wrist, gives him a look that’s almost not watery at all. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Lotta gelt. And, hey. Bet you we can figure out how to cheat playing dreidel.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, gruff, unsticking his hand from Steve. “Gimme the chocolate. We’ll have it for _oh fuck fuckfuck the PORK.”_

Bucky lunges for the back door, Steve automatically on his heels and only now realizing that his little Hannukah interruption meant _they hadn’t covered the meat_ and that while there _should_ have been a commotion of animals in the kitchen there was nothing but damning, damning absence. By the time they skid out into the backyard the dog’s scarfed down an entire shoulder and is industriously working on the second one, with all three of the cats _also_ out here and determinedly making their own dent in the scraps.

Bucky gives a gurgle of rage and dives for the dog. Chaos ensues. Separating the animals from the feast is like trying to round up brawling toddlers on meth. The cats hiss and skitter away and the dog tries a getaway outright, grabbing what’s left of the shoulder and bounding for the fence. Bucky catches it midair, the meat going flying and hitting the side of the shed with a thump; one cat dashes between Steve’s legs with some pork in its mouth while the other two scatter, one yowling as it goes.  

It’s fifteen minutes before they manage to corral them all and drag Belka, howling like a demon, from the hole under the back stairs. The meat is unsalvageable. Steve feels something like grief as he buries it in the compost bin, closing the lid as if on an old friend.

They are left to stand alone amidst the destruction. Bucky sighs. “I’ll make us sandwiches.”

“Don’t bother. I’m roasting all four of them next,” Steve says grimly as they go inside, jabbing a finger at the heathen cabal clustered resentfully under the kitchen table.

“That’d take too long,” Bucky says, but there’s a glint in his eye that says he’s not taking this loss lightly.

The dog glares back at them. “I don’t see what you have to be mad about,” Steve tells it. “You already get fed better than ninety percent of New York _and_ you ate _practically the whole goddamn thing._ You’re probably going to throw it up in fifteen minutes and then guess who’ll be cleaning that up? Not you!”

“Christ. Let’s make the sandwiches,” Bucky mutters. “Before we turn even more into our mothers.” He does crouch down, though, and point at each one of the offenders. “Your only saving is that you’re all too bony to eat.”

They make the sandwiches. The animals are kept in the kitchen, so that if they throw up it won’t be on any goddamn couch, bed or carpet. Belka has the nerve to moan piteously for food, though clearly knows better than to come out and rub against their ankles.

They eat standing at the counter. The sandwiches are great, as always, but it’s no slow roasted deep marinated bourbon pork shoulder. They chew in silence as eulogy.

At least for the first few minutes. “Do you think that was god telling me to keep kosher,” Bucky says.

Steve, caught with his mouth full, tries not to inhale tomato. “Urhm,” he manages. While he will, of course, support Bucky in whatever he decides, the honey cardamom ribs he made last month took Steve to a place he isn’t ready to come back from. “I think that’s… not… really…”

It takes Bucky making his rusty _heh heh heh_ noise to realize Buck’s fucking with him. “You _toad,”_ Steve garbles, outraged. “I do something nice for you and get _this -”_

“You bring God into our house, you better  be ready for the consequences,” Bucky says smugly, then dodges Steve’s kick, cackling.

**Author's Note:**

> this may have another chapter out soon HOWEVER i am trying to get other stuff out the door so dont hold your breath


End file.
